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Seeking Emancipation from Gender Regulation: Reflections on
Home Space for a Black Woman Academic/ Single Mother
Lisa WilliamWhite1
1) Department of Bilingual and Multicultural Education, California State University
Sacramento (CSUS), United States of America.
Date of publication: June 30th, 2012
To cite this article: WilliamWhite, L. (2012). Seeking Emancipation from
Gender Regulation: Reflections on Home Space for a Black Woman
Academic/ Single Mother. Qualitative Research in Education, 1(1), 435.
doi: 10.4471/qre.2012.01
To link this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.4471/qre.2012.01
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Qualitative Research in Education Vol. 1 N.1 June 2012 pp. 4-35
Seeking Emancipation from
Gender Regulation: Reflections on
Home Space for a Black Woman
Academic/ Single Mother
Lisa WilliamWhite
California State University Sacramento
Abstract
Using the work of Judith Butler on gender regulation, Black Feminist Thought
(BFT), and autobiographic storytelling, this piece illustrates how essentialist
notions of gender, and discourses related to gender create conflict in shaping
identity construction for a Black woman academic and single mother
(BWA/SM) in the United States. This piece reveals complex gendered and
racialized tropes related to notions of motherhood and womanhood, particularly
within the author’s own family.
Included here is how the author attempts to
transcend
these
complexities
in
her
quest
for
selfdefinition
and
selfactualization, unbridled by gender norms. Yet, race, gender and parental
status are significant intersecting categories in identity construction, and
inherent in the constructions are hegemonic discourses with which the author
continues to grapple. Consequently, the struggle to transcend these forces is
further complicated by the limited representation of Black women in the US
academy, and by the types of academic work where they find themselves
typically situated.
Keywords: autobiography, black woman academic, single mother, academy,
gendereder.
2012 Hipatia Press
ISSN 20146418
DOI: 10.4471/qre.2012.01
5
Qualitative Research in Education, 1 (1)
about the biological clock versus tenure clock demands. Neither am I
one of those married faculty women who had to stop the tenure clock to
have babies; nor am I one of those who chose single parenthood when
offered an academic appointment because her spouse was unable to find
work in the same field (Creamer, 2006; Philipsen, 2008), and I am
certainly not one of those women whose martial relationship was
strained due to competing academic career paths with one’s spouse
(Creamer, 2006). My trajectory toward pursuing and sustaining a career
in the professoriate as a Black woman academic and single mother
(BWA/SM) evolved from a complex tapestry of familial, cultural,
societal and professional experiences shaped by the intersections of race
and gender in the United States.
When I first began to write this manuscript in 2007, many woman
hours were spent trying to articulate my journey as a Black woman and
as a Black mother in pursuit of an academic career. Constructing my
autobiography
proved
cathartic,
yet
daunting
was
the
effort
to
simultaneously: (a) align my academic voice and personal life with the
existing scholarship on Black women in the academy; (b) situate my
experience within the scholarship on faculty career women; (c) respond
to the feedback and meet the timeline revisions of this then working
draft for publication; and (d) prepare financially and emotionally to
leave my children in the care of my sister, in the effort to present this
I
am not one of those single faculty women described by
Philipsen (2008) who was forced to choose between having a
career and having children; or one of those who had to worry
A civil society simply cannot afford to force people into false
dichotomies and ask that they make choices that require them to
abjure one if they want the other, or suffer dire consequences if
they pursue both. Instead, the focus ought to be on how to design
support mechanisms and realistic expectations to enable people to
have a fulfilling career as well as a family life without paying the
price in degrees of sanity or physical health. (Philipsen, 2008,
p.3334).
manuscript (a working paper at the time) at a national conference in the
US. Ultimately, I was unsuccessful in meeting all those endeavors – my
meager salary as an Assistant Professor and the physical and emotional
demands
between
meeting
work
obligations
and
parenting
responsibilities made it all near to impossible. So utterly frustrated and
overwhelmed I became that I threw this manuscript in a box and there it
would stay. Until now.
Homespace, where family life is organized and situated, is a powerful
institution guided by regulatory norms and discourses that shape
identity.
Discourses are tied up with power; they have influence on
actions, social structures and political and judicial decisions. Discourses
are also a product that constructs practices that are present in our
society, having an effect on how people act, and what kinds of behaviors
are conceived and produced (Alsop & Fitzsimons, 2002, p. 88). Thus
today I reread my narrative and think about the structures and
discourses that have shaped my family life and career choice and how
these structures shape family life and work. You see, the career path I
have chosen is meritbased (Knights & Richards, 2003), competitive
and demanding. Structurally, the Academy is a space shaped by
traditional, Eurocentric, and masculine notions visàvis white male
faculty with stayathome spouses who support their work (Mason,
2006). Female professors, on the other hand, typically remain single or
married and childless.
Research demonstrates the gendered realities of women, particularly
how academic life and motherhood are both demanding institutions that
require women to be constantly available (Leonard & Malina, 1994;
Bracken, Allen & Dean, 2006; Philipsen, 2008), which leads to
incredible pressure on women to make one’s career the main focus of
attention, even with children (MunnGiddings, 1998; Bracken, et. al,
2006; Philipsen, 2008). Then there are the utterly depressing accounts
of academic women who often fail to move up the faculty ranks due to
family issues – high
rates of separation and divorce, lack of
partnerships, and children's needs (Probert, 2005; Philipsen 2008), and
outside responsibilities (Bailyn, 2003; Sherman, Beaty, Crum & Peters,
2010). Thus, it is no wonder that many women experience higher levels
of stress than men in their academic jobs (Doyle & Hind, 1998).This
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L. William-White - Seeking Emancipation from Gender
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Qualitative Research in Education, 1 (1)
balancing act mirrors the experiences of married professional women in
other occupations who also experience role or identity conflict (Bell,
1990; Denton, 1990; Davidson, 1997).
A scarcity of narratives reveal the challenges of single Black woman
with children. There’s Hale’s (2001) account about trying to support her
child’s
academic
needs,
which
included
her
fears
about
how
motherhood threatens to undermine one’s status with colleagues
(Philipsen, 2008); and in the same edited volume there is the account of
“happily divorced” Black woman who expressed relief about not having
to juggle the varied roles any longer (p. 101) At the core of these stories
is the challenge of role conflict, which is also documented by Gregory
(2001) and Covington Clarkson (2001). To further illustrate the strife,
there is a particularly telling exchange that occurs in the work of
Covington Clarkson’s (2001). She shares how after explaining to her
three small children that she “would be going to school to become a
doctor,” her threeyearold asked if she would “still be their mother?”
(p. 163). There is poignancy in the simplicity of this child’s question!
Yet outside of these stories, a huge chasm exists in finding scholarship
which elucidates the intersection between the faculty career and family
life for Black women, and even more challenging for BWA/SM. Where
is this research? Where are those voices?
Moreover, Black woman in general, and Black single mothers
particularly, have had few spaces to discuss their racialized and
gendered experiences. Yet, understanding our experiences is imperative
for affirming an increasingly diverse and vibrant teaching and research
faculty who can provide students’ multiperspectival exposure to diverse
epistemologies, views of the world, lifestyle choices, communities and
leadership styles (Nkomo, 1988) that comprise our academic institutions
and society; stories that would further knowledge development in
interdisciplinary fields such as the social sciences and education. This is
important to not only move Black women’s experiences from the
margins of society, but also to engage in storytelling that promotes
awareness of race (Nkomo, 1992) and gender as important points for
analysis. Such analysis enables us to gain awareness about faculty work
lives and loads, while examining notions of what is normal (Bracken et
al, 2006), and who is normal. Most importantly, the quality of academic
work life is more than a personal issue, but an institutional one which
has implications for scholarly productivity and personal fulfillment
(Bracken et al., 2006).
Black Life as a Transformative Research Agenda
Black Feminist Thought (BFT) and autobiography (Denzin, 1989)
enables me to illuminate how family discourses about gender is
embodied
within
binaries
and
hierarchies,
where
notions
of
motherhood are internally and externally regulated by material and
symbolic notions of gender. Because of this, I advocate for women to
share private and sometimes painful experiences to create a collective
description of the world in which we participate. And autobiography, as
a methodology, promotes this opportunity, as it is a genre that connects
the personal to the cultural, and places the author within a social
context. This reflexivity frees me to look deeply at selfother
interactions (Ellis & Bochner, 2000), drawing upon highly personalized
accounts from my life to develop some cultural understanding. In fact,
O’Connor, Lewis &Mueller (2005) reminds me that Black women are
not necessarily expected to silence our experiences, thoughts and desires
in relations with others; while Hooks (1984) argues for us to construct
models of feminist theorizing and scholarship that deepens our
understanding of our experiences; asserting that “as subjects, [we] have
the right to define [our] own reality, establish [our] own identities, name
[our] history” (1989, p. 42). Thus, my gift of doubleconsciousness
(DuBois, 1968) as a Black woman in a society shaped by racialized
oppression, along with my critical consciousness as a woman shaped by
“double oppression” (Hooks 1989) allows me to evoke my truth in a
tradition shaped by scholars like Lorde (1984); Collins, (2000); and
Cole & GuySheftall (2003).
Moreover, my positionality was borne from the knowledge that
articulating the personal is not just political; it is a revolutionary act
when undertaken with honesty and a willingness to interrogate ideas.
And life stories are not extant, compartmentalized vignettes only to be
shared in the private sphere or relegated as something only worthy of
attention in the discourse of popular literature. Rather, truth telling
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L. William-White - Seeking Emancipation from Gender
produces research as a historical, political and moral imperative (King,
2005; Lee, 2005). Stories also connect personal experience with the
wider subcultural setting in which one is localized, repositioning and
elevating subaltern epistemologies, as evidenced in Gilkes (1988);
Denzin & Lincoln (2000); Sparkes (2000); Holt (2003); Brown &
WilliamWhite (2010); and WilliamWhite (2010).
Appropriating Judith Butler’s ‘Gender Regulation’: Discourses on
Black Womanhood and Motherhood.
I draw from Judith Butler’s (2004) essay, “Gender Regulation” to
analyze the discourses surrounding Black womanhood and motherhood.
Gender regulation functions as a set of social norms and symbolic
positions that enables me to examine and deconstruct the notion of
gender as a fiction embodied through performance.
Butler (2004)
maintains that people are regulated by notions of what it means to be of
a particular gender, and gender is actualized through performance –
behaviors and actions that demonstrate one’s authorship of a gender
identity. As an illustration, the US slave system and Jim Crow
segregation gave birth to gender norms that constructed Black women’s
identity. First, they belonged to historically subjugated groups; they
were chattel.
Their bodies were property they existed within an
economic system where they were denied their basic human rights, not
even the right to make reproductive and childbearing choices. Yet, they
were also often positioned at the forefront of the Black family and
community. For example, efforts to elevate the status of emancipated
slaves focused on Black women’s social influence, which included
indoctrination into Eurocentric social values and traditions of Christian
character, submission, and socialresponsibility for the uplift of their
communities (Shaw, 1996; Collins, 2001).
Black women’s gender identity is cemented in a racialized script of
gender regulation which embodies performative acts —the preexisting
sociopolitical significance of subservience, service or servitude. For
example, Shaw (1996) documents how during Jim Crow1 , Black
women performed public roles as domestic workers (Dill, 1988) and
performed responsibilities “bequeathed to them as woman,” that were
9
Qualitative Research in Education, 1 (1)
10
centered on the needs of the race (Shaw, 1996, p. 4). In the church, their
efforts was shaped by gendered roles of service (Gilkes, 1988). Hooks
(1990) suggests that Black women “nurtur[ed] the souls” of the
community (p. 41), but were also subjected to a sexist definition of
service as a women’s “natural” role. Hooks writes:
…Their lives were hard.
They were black women who for the
most part worked outside the home serving white folks, cleaning
their houses, washing their clothes, tending their children – black
women who worked in the fields or in the streets, whatever they
could do to make ends meet, whatever was necessary. Then they
returned to their homes to make life happen there. This tension
between service outside one’s home, family and kin network,
service provided to white folks which took time and energy, and
the effort of black women to conserve enough of themselves to
provide service (care and nurturance) within their own families and
communities is one of the many factors that has historically
distinguished the lot of black women in patriarchal White
supremacist society from that of black men (Hooks, 1990, pp. 383
384).
Hooks (1990) states that Black women’s primary “responsibility…
[was] to construct domestic households as spaces of care and nurturance
in the face of the brutal harsh reality of racist oppression, or sexist
domination” (p. 42).
Gender regulation imposes a “grid of legibility on our lives and sets
the “parameters” of performance within our social interactions (Butler,
2004, p. 42).
Gender is an incessant activity performed with or for
another, even if the other is only imaginary (Butler, 2004, p. 1). Thus,
that Black women historically have labored within and outside the home
to support families is welldocumented, but the regulatory fiction that
defines Black female identity helped to construct a gendered discourse
about who Black women are expected to be at all times, and how she
should purport herself. As such, the grid propagates the notion of Black
woman in a perpetual struggle for survival and her identity is
inseparable from the need and desire to protect and support the family”
(Gregory, 2001, p. 124). There is certainly no refutation here that Black
L. William-White - Seeking Emancipation from Gender
families have depended on the labor of Black women to maintain the
nuclear family (which continues to be regulated by white racial
dominance in social, economic and political realms in the US). Thus,
this dependence enables Black families to persevere and display
resilience as these families reject a strict adherence to sexrole
designation, which differs significantly to the gender regulation and role
construction of white womanhood.
Yet, Black female identity also resides within a unique grid which
provides a site for discursive examination.
For instance, since the
preponderance of Black woman’s work historically was resigned to
domestic service and childrearing, this helped to anchor Black female
identity in a disquieting, American nostalgia, shrouded in the material
production of gender through the body. Whether rearing her own or the
children of others, uncontested “service” is an accepted attribute of
Black womanhood and this essentialist trope endures. Black women’s
lives from slavery to freedom helped to forge a “trajectory of Black
women’s bodies as sites of laboring,” (Johnson, 2003, p. 104; Jones,
1985). Hurston (1969) too speaks of the Black woman as the mule of
the world, further exemplifying the appropriation of her Black body as a
moniker of a gendered and racialized being; norms that are historically,
socially and culturally grounded. Further, standards of what is normal
provide a script or rubric to evaluate the performance of gender identity.
We see this through such ideas as women are not supposed to “act” or
“perform” like men in showing strength, assertiveness or ability in their
dimensions of self. However, this expectation has created a longterm
struggle for Black women:
…submissiveness…was never in the cards for us…Whether in the
cotton fields of the South or the factories of the North, Black
women worked side by side with men to contribute to the welfare
of the family.
This did not mean that men were demeaned and
unloved, but it did mean that women had a voice about the destiny
of their families. That independence and resiliency were admired
because they aided in the collective survival when society made it
difficult for Black men to
find work.
But when we began to
internalize EuroAmerican values, then Black women were no
longer “real” women... (Naylor, 1988, p. 28)
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Qualitative Research in Education, 1 (1)
Collins (2004) further substantiates how discourses operate in
producing Black women:
all women engage in an ideology that deems middleclass,
heterosexual White femininity as normative. In this context, Black
femininity as a subordinated gender identity becomes constructed
not just in relation to White women, but also in relation to multiple
others, namely, all men…These benchmarks construct a discourse
of a hegemonic (White) femininity that
becomes a normative
yardstick for all femininities in which Black women typically are
relegated to the bottom of the gender hierarchy (p. 193).
Norms provide a script that adheres to the regulatory powers of
gender, and any deviation from the script is measured against those
regulations in an effort to normalize what acceptable behavior should
be. Butler (2004) suggests that gender norms are “invoked and cited by
bodily practices that also have the capacity to alter norms” (p. 52). To
illustrate this point, Collins (2004) maintains that Black women are
often labeled aggressive and nonfeminine, departing from notions
ascribed to white women.
Another controlling image is the Black
women as “super” human or heroic (Wallace, 1978; Collins, 2004), an
idea of Black female emasculation propagated in 1930s. There is also
the Sapphirecharacter who is “overbearing, bossy, sharptongued, loud
mouthed, and controlling” (Cole et. al., 2003, p. xxxv); and images of
the matriarchal, “ballbusting” Black women who competes with Black
men are replete in popular discourse. This latter depiction helps to fuel
the polarizing discourses that often exist between Black women and
Black men due to the “castration” notion, and the perceived dominance
that has been stripped from Black men and attributed to Black women
(Collins, 1999). These discourses have an enduring history.
Certain positions have universal laws that are subject to unalterable
rules. The identity of mother is a worthwhile category to examine as it is
assigned and ascribed to the female gender, and holds a symbolic
position regulated from inception. Thus, the symbolic position of being
a mother holds an esteemed and “quasitimeless character” (Butler,
2004, p. 45), one understood as a sphere with normalized behaviors and
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L. William-White - Seeking Emancipation from Gender
